Woman abandoned as an infant meets her rescuer 30 years later
Click here for updates on this story
IRWINDALE, California (KABC) — Just days after meeting her siblings for the first time, a Moreno Valley woman who was abandoned as an infant finally met with the man who rescued her.
Jessica Hicks was able to thank the good Samaritan who found her 30 years ago.
Isaac Oliva says he was stunned when he got a phone call a few days ago from Hicks.
“‘Did you find a child in Irwindale?’ I go ‘Yes, I did.’ She goes ‘Well, that that child was me,'” Oliva said, recalling the phone call. “And I was just full of emotions, and my jaw just dropped, and I go ‘Oh my God.'”
Hicks was an infant when she was abandoned, found three decades ago wrapped in a blanket behind a building in Irwindale.
“They don’t know her real name. She is 9 pounds, 4 ounces,” Eyewitness News anchor Marc Brown said during a newscast while covering the story in 1990. He interviewed Irwindale police detective Glenn Purbaugh for the story.
“It’s not every day we get a call of a child, a newborn baby, left in the bushes,” the now retired detective said. He was also at the reunion alongside Oliva and Hicks.
Standing beside Oliva, Hicks said she felt overwhelmed, but also happy and complete.
Hicks was never reunited with her birth parents. She was adopted when she was 15 months old.
“She was a blessing from God and L.A. County, and I love her very much like she was my very own,” said Julie Swallow, Hick’s adoptive parent.
Hicks, now a mother of six, had been searching for answers about her background. Through DNA testing she was able to identify her birth family and met two of her siblings over the weekend.
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.
